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Street vendors are engaged in “fraud” when they cynically hire disabled veterans to skirt permit regulations, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday as he commented on the increasingly bitter food fight in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Only truly disabled vets have the right to set up shop anywhere, according to a 19th-century post-Civil War law, but some epicurean entrepreneurs have taken to hiring them as cover.

“They hire a vet to stand there and [he] has nothing to do with [it],” Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show.

“That’s as much fraud [as] minority and women-owned businesses where you just hire somebody that’s a minority or woman and say, ‘Oh, you’re the name person.’ ”

Bloomberg was reacting to a Post report yesterday highlighting the case of Pasang Sherpa, who defaulted on his $642,000 city contract to operate a hot dog stand in front of the Met.

He returned later with disabled Vietnam vet Leo Morris Jr. — whom he paid $100 a day to stay nearby, Morris told The Post. Disabled veterans do not need a special permit to operate in front of the Met.

“Maybe he’s just catching up on his memos now,” Vietnam vet Dan Rossi, 69, quipped about Bloomberg. He said he’s been complaining to City Hall for years about what he called “rent-a-vets.”

On any given day at least six food carts crowd by the steps of the Met, prompting complaints by the museum and a summons blitz by cops this week.

During a Post visit yesterday, vets were working in five of the six carts.

Only Sherpa’s cart lacked a veteran. Morris spent the afternoon napping in a nearby car.